


Nature, Nurture

by katiac



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 20:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katiac/pseuds/katiac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah and Cal's early days together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nature, Nurture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eudaimon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own "Orphan Black." Some dialogue used from episode 2.03.

Sarah Manning has done this enough times to know a sucker when she sees one.  
  
There's no missing the way he's watching her from the other side of a dimly lit bar--picking at the label of a half-empty beer and trying not to be obvious about it--but even the two old drunks at the table in back can see the lumberjack is looking to get laid. Shaking a hand through her hair, she slowly rotates the glass in front of her, watching light reflect off the dark amber liquid until out of the corner of her eye, she sees him push off his stool and come around towards hers.  
  
She downs the rest of it and digs a couple bills from her pack, pretending not to notice him until he's practically on top of her.  
  
"Can I get you another?"  
  
Only then does she take a good look. Tall and broad-shouldered, he hasn't had a haircut in months. _Maybe years._ Face partially hidden behind a rough beard, what bits and pieces she could see weren't particularly unappealing. Strong jaw. Dark eyes.   
  
She shrugs. "Yeah sure, why not?"  
  
He stares at her for a minute, doesn't smile. She decides she likes that, as much as she ever allows herself to like any of them.   
  
"I'm Cal."  
  
"Sarah."  


 

* * *

  
  
She sees him in Kira in all the places she wishes she didn't.   
  
The daughter she kept a secret, whose paternity she insisted she wasn't sure about to Felix and Mrs. S, for once wanting _one_ thing to keep all to herself, with each passing year it became impossible to ignore the little things, traits that Fee would've been the first to point out _hadn't_ come from her.   
  
Her earnestness. Generosity that sometimes seems beyond her years and as foreign to Sarah as the oddly intuitive questions she's never found a good way to answer.  
  
And it's that same earnestness that guts her as they sit together on the bed while she tries to cobble together an explanation for what she's done, sick with guilt from the moment Kira stares at Cal across the room and asks, _"Are you my dad?"_  
  
She can't look at any of them after that. Not at Felix, who'll call her on her shit for having brought them there in the first place. Not at Kira, who will one day stop running into her arms and see her for the failure she is. And most of all, not at Cal, who once made the mistake of seeing her as something more than what she was, and paid for it dearly.  


 

* * *

  
  
She has his first password by the end of the second week.  
  
It's almost too easy. After only two beers she nodded and looked up from her drink enough to get him going about designing mini-drone pollinators and how he'd walked away when he realized his technology was being sold to the military instead. She couldn't decide if the shit about declining bee populations was a cheap line to get in her pants or he was for real. By the time they were on the fourth, she knew she had him hooked.  
  
And as she wakes up yet again to the smell of pancakes and ham frying in the kitchen downstairs, she's not sure that's a good thing.   
  
The twist in her gut is more prominent than the day before, growing harder to ignore no matter how many times she reminds herself he's just a mark, that she'll have moved on in a few weeks’ time. It lingers when she jumps in the shower and blasts the water as hot as it will go, lifting her face into the spray as if it might wash away everything she doesn't want to think about.  
  
"Morning."  
  
"Hey, you." His arms snake around her middle, a low rumble sounding in his throat as he kisses the back of her head. "I see you stole my shirt."  
  
"What?" Tensing for all of half a second at the words, she chews the end of her thumb and finishes pouring the coffee. "Er . . . yeah."  
  
Unfazed, Cal moves around her to the table and puts a heaping plate at each of their places. They sit.   
  
"So I was thinking maybe we try another hike today if you're up for it." He pauses with a forkful of pancakes halfway to his mouth. "Go see that lake I was telling you about?"  
  
"Yeah, sure." She nods and pokes her ham. "No, sounds great."  
  
He never questions her story after the first day or two, and then only seemingly out of a desire to help. It's a far cry from Mrs. S. From her teachers. From every other person in her life who professed to give a shit, but only ever saw the bad in her, where Cal seems blinded to anything but good.  
  
And the closer she gets to screwing him and emptying his accounts, the harder that is to swallow.  


 

* * *

  
  
They glare at one another on a cold, miserable morning out by the woodpile, and even after eight years, even in the face of all the accusations, she can't help but notice all the little things that now remind her of Kira. Things she wasn't around long enough to take note of before--the angle of his mouth. The way he slumps his shoulders when he's frustrated. A habit of rocking back and forth on his ankles.   
  
_Fucking nature versus nurture._ Cosima would probably get off on it if she told her.  
  
Across from her, Cal blows out his breath. "I'm not going to kick this little girl out on the street." His voice is softer. "You can spend another night if it helps you out. Just don't steal anything."  
  
She doesn't say anything, knows somewhere deep inside that she deserves it.   
  
Because that's what they do, really, at their hearts. She wrecks things. Fucks them up. Takes from people and disappears. He wanted to fucking save the world one dwindling wheat crop at a time.   


 

* * *

  
  
"You okay?"  
  
He's curled around her back in bed, toying with the ends of her hair. Sarah forces her voice to be light.  
  
"Mm-hmm."  
  
Silent for a moment, he smooths the strands off her neck and tries again. "Tired?"  
  
"Yeah. A little."   
  
She has all his passwords now, found the file with his account numbers. There's no more reason to stay and every reason to get out as soon as she can before something happens to punch holes in her flimsy background that she can't explain away. It's happened before. A mark that got too curious and started sniffing around. One that got suspicious without her catching on.   
  
She feels it before the words come, the sudden tension in his muscles, the change in his breathing, a silent alarm sounding even as the hushed whisper ghosts against her neck.  
  
"Sarah, this month has been--"  
  
"Yeah," she finishes for him, afraid of where this is going, afraid of what he might say.  
  
"I want you to stay."   
  
Not responding for the space of two breaths, she swallows and tentatively looks over one shoulder at him. "Yeah?"  
  
"Yeah." Eyes dark, he rubs the exposed edge of her shoulder for a minute and looks down. "If you want me to get a ring--"  
  
"No." She forces a smile she can't quite hold. "Don't need one, you know?" The next words she regrets more than anything else that passes between them, in the weeks leading up to that night and in the ones that follow, perhaps never more so than when she sits in the filthy bathroom behind a gas station miles from anywhere, staring in disbelief at the little pink stick. "It's just you and me. That's all that matters."  
  
For a second, time seems to freeze. And then Cal gives her one of the rare smiles she can imagine were a lot less rare before he was screwed out of everything he worked for and they're kissing too fiercely to care about anything else.  
  
And after, once he's asleep and she's carefully picked up her bag, removed the photos they took together and slipped his car keys from the hook by the door, she stares at the computer screen and hates herself a little more for getting soft. Because she knows what he's worth and that this con could mean not having to pull another one for a long time. Enough to set her up for _years._  
  
Blowing out a long breath, she types in $10,000 and gets out of there before he can fuck with her head any more.

 


End file.
